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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (1 March) . . Page.. 428 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

A 17-year-old Aboriginal boy who was a petrol sniffer in an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community was sentenced to seven months plus 120 days' mandatory sentence imprisonment for stealing food, alcohol and petrol. A 15-year-old Aboriginal boy received a mandatory detention sentence after he broke a window. He broke the window after hearing of a friend's suicide.

A 17-year-old Aboriginal youth was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment after his third stealing conviction. His third offence was stealing a packet of biscuits. Four Aboriginal youths were subject to a mandatory sentence after jointly stealing $1.60 worth of petrol. An 18-year-old indigenous man obeyed his father and reported to the police that he had stolen a cigarette lighter. He was sentenced to 14 days' imprisonment.

In presenting these case studies to the Senate committee in their submission, ATSIC commented on what emerges most clearly from them. What emerges, in the view of ATSIC - and I support the view - is that a great deal of theft and property damage, particularly by indigenous children, is a direct result of poverty. Many of the indigenous children sentenced under the mandatory sentencing laws have had extensive previous contact with welfare authorities, have low literacy levels and may have English as a third language. Many have a history of substance abuse. Many of the adult Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who come before the court are there for offences which were committed whilst intoxicated. Many have an alcohol dependency. Large proportions are reliant on social security and have no opportunity to make restitution for the property loss or damage arising from their offences.

There has been much recent discussion of the poor socioeconomic conditions of indigenous adults and youth and young people which make them so much more susceptible to criminalisation. This is an issue that was discussed extensively in the Bringing them home report. I commend this discussion on the impacts of poverty and the impacts of marginalisation in indigenous communities, and their relationship with the criminal justice system and the impact that these laws have. I commend to members the many submissions that have been made to the Senate inquiry in relation to that.

The corollary, that which flows from that, is the extent to which mandatory pre-sentencing is obviously so discriminatory in its impact on indigenous people because it punishes the poorest people in our community for what are, in effect, crimes of poverty and social marginalisation. The mandatory sentencing laws of the Northern Territory and Western Australia - all thinking people throughout Australia know this - essentially punish people for being poor and for being socially marginalised.

In May this year the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation will launch its draft document for reconciliation. That document will be fundamental to the reconciliation process, but reconciliation is more than a document. The document will be supported by strategies that will give effect to the intention of reconciliation. One of these strategies will look to ways to address indigenous disadvantage. It seems rather banal that we have to repeat some of the statistics or some of the indicators in relation to indigenous people, but we need to keep doing it, as Ms Tucker has suggested. It seems that it is necessary

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